Georgi Tenev - Party Headquarters

Yes, the money was already on the table when I left the bathroom, stepping barefoot onto the soft carpet. Water dripped all around me as I stood in the center of the room, my head was spinning ever so slightly from the heat, from exhaustion, from the red-eye flight, from impatience to do the deed and from the wavering question mark lodged in my stomach: Why did I do it? Do I even understand what I’m doing now? Do I have to do this? Is it right? Does it mean I’m responsible, that by doing this the blood is on my hands?

Then I flopped down on the still-made bed. The bedspread was clean, but somehow shabby. Sterilized and ostensibly normal, yet with my body’s expanded and cleansed pores I sensed its lack of coziness, overcrowded with reminders of previous guests, sleeping bodies. Of course, all this turned my thoughts back to the hospital, or perhaps it was the opposite: I continued to be there in my mind, until in the end the bed itself from room 308 at the Hotel Hamburg actually began to move toward Krankenstrasse — or better, Krankenhausstrasse — in any case, it was moving toward that Strasse as if toward a test point where I can check with a simple physical touch whether I really am moving or whether I’m dreaming under hypnosis, or both, or most likely some third possibility, or whether I really am fighting my way toward the goal I have set for myself.

I began to entertain the thought of saying “to hell with all this” and going out and having fun with his money. Whatever his means is a different story, but now isn’t the time for that, not tonight.

Right then, that night, at 8 P.M. as I left the Hotel Hamburg, I was sure that this long day would end by midnight at the latest and with a girl, paid for with cash. Or better yet, with two hired girls. And I would pay them more than I had to, because it would be his money. The booth with the red ceiling and the neon lights was merely a rehearsal. So that I would later be able to last longer with real girls, with prostitutes — I’m not going to come fast, I told myself. And so on.

Those were my plans at eight.

It is worth noting that this city, with one foot in the sea and the other in the river, has strange pigeons. At first, you mistake them for northern seagulls, but they are actually pigeons, they have a white or dark gray ring around the neck. A sign of something familiar, native, like back home. Here’s the other thing that made an impression on me: As I was wandering around at night, next to the manicured green lawns on either side of the navigation canal, I saw light shadows jumping on the grass. Because of their size, I first thought they were rabbits. But then I saw that they were rats, nonchalantly passing by on some path of their own. Hamburg — a river town, a sea town, northern and very rich. Rats, prostitutes, and the Reeperbahn: they didn’t give the impression of seediness, but quite the opposite, the feeling of stable Saxon comfort, which made it almost fitting to pay for pleasure with his money.

Of course, when I think about that money, the pleasure can only fade, nothing more.

I couldn’t give in that easily, however. I tried to find somebody to blame: the mechanized environment, the change machine, the video player that projected the films on the screen, those monotonous doors, too, and the neon light, the apathetic or overexcited faces, the silhouettes lingering by the windows — the whole disturbing yet quintessentially German erotic system, from which you expect at least a little more chaos, but no. All of these tiny elements pile up like obstacles, speed bumps against accelerating sensitivity, and instead of awakening more excitement, they arouse thought above all. And in the end, maybe even some pangs of conscience, and a little fear.

Hamburg, early or late. Love is already laid out on the autopsy table. I’m becoming more and more alarmed. Am I ruining my life? Just a month ago, even a week ago I still could’ve turned back. But now I’ve made my move, I’ve rolled the dice. I think some parts of my body are rolling around with them, my head definitely is. Somebody else is calling the shots and making decisions instead of me, someone who looks like me, but in a different form and a different phase, somewhere in the past. That’s why I’ve started to trust that somebody more. But if it turns out that the path from here on out leads me to some final abyss, the figure of that somebody won’t be solid enough; it will disintegrate, leaving me disagreeably alone. Whom will I blame then, who will be the guilty one?

I turn back the clock, then quickly wind it forward, and then back again. I take one of the bundles: new, smooth bills, all hundreds, a hundred times a hundred in a light-blue wrapper. I fan through the stack, the paper passes quickly under my fingers and the identical edges repeat themselves. No motion at all, suspended animation. The silhouette of a bridge reflected in water smacks into the reflections on the bills above it. There are no pedestrians on the bridge, the map in the lower corner is too general, too empty. Where is Hamburg on that map, where am I on Seewartenstrasse, in a gray concrete citadel-hotel on the shore, wrapped in night and glass? The thought of going down to the lobby gives me the chills, but the dangerous thing is that I don’t even know why. I got mixed up in something I had no right to mess with; touching this money, I smell the scent of the leather coffin it was put into, ready for burial. In fact, I was this close to throwing it into the dark waters of the harbor. To the rats. To the girls in the bluish outfits, leaning on eighteenth century façades up there on the street called Reeperbahn. A strange slice of the city’s history, where the rope makers used to spread out bales of hemp to braid kilometers of rope, reaching as far as the city gates. It would be a naïve lie, however, one you wouldn’t believe, if I told you that I blame some other noose, and not the noose I’m tightening within myself. How did I end up here? Not accidentally, of course. Even if there were coincidences and chaotic stabs into the flesh of fate, I nevertheless said “yes.”

Money frightens, that’s another one of its characteristics: it arouses fear. It’s as if its very origins evoke crime, despite the bank’s guarantee of cleanliness. The more money, the more suspicion.

I sit up, get to my feet, put on my sunglasses, and pause in front of the mirror hanging on the wallpapered wall of room 308, Hotel Hamburg. Who do you look like now? Am I sufficiently suspicious looking? Obviously not to the girls lounging in their usual places on Davidstrasse, who readily toss invitations my way:

“ Komm schon, Blondy !”

“ Komm schon, wir machen es französisch !”

The docks of Hamburg, on the banks of the Elba, the largest pontoon structure in Europe. St. Michael’s Tower with its four clocks — the tallest clock tower in Europe. I don’t dare fix my gaze there for long, on the home of the Archangel, so instead my eyes follow the smaller mast of light, the white clock faces. They shine straight at me: the harbor tower. Where should I sail away to?

I get dressed. I don’t have the right clothes or storm gear to stand proudly on the deck. I have nowhere to sail to now, so it wouldn’t make any sense. I know what I have to do this morning, at dawn: run.

Running is a forgotten pleasure, but that’s not the point now; we’re talking about survival. About escape — running usually turns out to be the path to it. The only difference is the starting and ending points — from what or from whom, and to where and why am I running? — everything is still unclear.

I don’t care if I look ridiculous in my hiking boots and too-short shorts verging on Speedos. I don’t glance at the professional maniacs who start while it’s still dark, I pass them by as if they’re shadows stuck inside fancy three-ply runner’s gear made of revolutionary fibers. I’m hopelessly sweaty, dark wet stains appear in my armpits and on my back. I don’t have a hat or a visor or earphones to sway to some rhythm like those sports zombies on the paths. They pass, meet, and go around me because I don’t swerve, I run in a straight line. A tall German with his two-meter-long strides tries to pass me — I don’t think so, my friend. You may not realize it, but I can tolerate pain. My heels are burning, my socks are twisting around my shins. My gait is aggressive, ugly, but I keep an enviable distance — see ya’ later, sucker! — and he turns off, as if he’d been planning to go that way all along, to avoid defeat. Because he can’t pass me. Now that I’ve gone into sprint mode, there’s no turning back. Full speed ahead. Sweat pours down, gluing my eyelids shut, drenching my eyebrows — I can’t see and have no idea where I’m going, but the running continues, I run and run.